Harmony of Hustle
Jump into the World of Justin Shoemaker aka "The Waterboy" . From Business, to music, this is the inside look of the world of the hyper-driven and their Harmony of Hustle.
Harmony of Hustle
Episode #31: Year in Review | The Good The Bad The Shite
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What is happening. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a long-awaited episode of Harmony of Hustle. I know it has been a hot minute since I have done one of these episodes and really we've been super busy, so I figured I'd do this episode as a year in review. I know you're saying, justin, it is March, what are you talking about? Year in review? Well, the reality is, this has now been officially two years in business, so technically it is a full two years in review, and I think this would just be a good little spot to record and get back on pace of doing these episodes. For you guys. It has been a insane few months and I have learned a lot this last year and I think for a lot of small business owners, there is a lot that I hopefully will help you as well. So I just wanted to go through this whole year lessons that we've learned, some of our wins, some of our losses, and then really the game plan going into year three, which should I know we say this all the time should hopefully be the best year, right?
Speaker 1:But as you grow, get more challenges. So let's start with the good stuff. Uh, the winds. Uh, maryland is now open, so we are now a three state company, which is great. Uh, we can now operate in three different locations, which gives us more people that we can attract, more homes we can get into and obviously we will increase the absolute total threshold of value that the business can provide. So really happy about that. That took a lot longer than I thought. That was about a five-month process just to get licensed and all the stuff that I needed for Maryland. They were not playing, so that took me a lot, a lot of time. We've got some new rockstar sales guys, which is awesome. Obviously, whenever you get really good talent into an organization, it just feels like a breath of fresh air.
Speaker 1:I'd say one of the biggest challenges has been just getting good talent. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, I don't know if it's people are scared to get into sales. I'm not sure what it is. But finding people who are willing to learn can take the time to go through the learning curves and might not have it all figured out, but have a great attitude. It's super hard to find and you know, especially as a small business owner, you can always cultivate that type of attitude in a business, but it's a lot harder than just having that come delivered. I always say it's so much easier to build a killer out of someone with a good attitude than someone who has maybe the good skill set but a terrible attitude.
Speaker 1:We got a new admin team now, which has been incredibly helpful. For the last two years, I was doing all the admin work myself and failing pretty miserably at it, and a lot of that relates to calling customers, calling with customer issues, scheduling all this stuff, and it really took away from me being able to focus on some of the stuff in the business that I need to be focusing on, like, hey, where's my cash going? So now that I have a full-time admin, it has been an amazing help. Customer experience is a lot better. Things aren't being missed. We can follow up with clients a lot better, handle all of our incoming lead gen a lot better, as well as track data in a way that we weren't able to do it before, so that was a massive win for us. New product offering is now live, so we now have a reverse osmosis countertop unit that we're going to be selling. Only downside is we do have to order a lot of it in bulk, but once we can order it, the margins on this thing are insane. So I'm really happy about it and, from what I've seen in the reverse osmosis world, I love the ROs that we sell currently, but a lot of these under the sink systems. Because of the way the ROs are designed, they just inherently have more issues, which means more go backs, more customer complaints. So this is also in a way to lower the amount of complaints that we get from clients, because with the unit the the amount of complaints that we get from clients because with the unit the way it's designed, there's not a lot of plumbing involved, so there's a lot less that can go wrong. It's all intact in the unit itself, so that not only can we make more money on the units, but we'll also save a lot more money because we're not having to go back and service these units for the customers, which is a huge, massive win for us.
Speaker 1:Next thing is we just got a new CRM. So we were using Zoho, one which every entrepreneur I've ever met freaking hate Zoho, and I can see why. So we now use a CRM called jobber Very, very good CRM, especially for what we do. It allows me to track my clients better automated communications, invoicing, everything. The data tracking on it is phenomenal. It's only 249 bucks a month, so if you're a small business and you do home service, I would definitely check it out. You know it doesn't have the full functionality of certain things like a service Titan, but compared to the price it's a no brainer. So I would definitely get it. It is a very robust system. Customer service is crazy good, um, and it really lowers the amount of stuff that you have to do on the backend as far as data followups, things like that.
Speaker 1:Um, I also brought on an installation service manager. This was a position I didn't really know I needed, Uh, and I got it from some of my lessons learned and basically he handles all install issues, install calls, and he can actually help guide my customers on how to solve some of these problems over the phone, because some of the issues that we've been having having been problems right, it's just been the customer thought there was an issue, or there's a valve that wasn't fully turned on, or there's a kink in the line, or we just had to reprogram something Not a big deal. So that has been phenomenal now that he can handle a lot of that load, which not only saves my installers from having to go out. But it also increases again the customer experience right, which should increase reviews, referrals, all those things that help the business grow organically. Uh, we won three state and government jobs total. So that was a big win for us last year. You know, one thing I really am focusing on this year is doing bigger jobs. You know more commercial work, more federal work because the paychecks are bigger. Obviously, sales cycles are longer. But it's a lot better to get these big contracts because you get made more money, you can have good margins and as you get into that world you can get more and more and more, as long as you do good work.
Speaker 1:Bookkeeping accountant just got a new bookkeeping accountant, which was a great thing to have. Also a little scary thing to have. When you actually see what's wrong with your business on the books. It's kind of alarming, and it's alarming how fast things can spiral out of control and how much you can bleed very quickly. So make sure having a good book, a good bookkeeper, is super important. I've gone through like five of them until I found the one I'm with now, and this is why having a network is so important, because I found this bookkeeper from a mutual friend of mine who runs a massive business I think they do about 10 million a year and I was just like, dude, I need help with this. Like what can I do? And so he sent me his bookkeeper. They're not cheap but like anything in business, I have learned if you really want good quality stuff especially when it comes, like your books, your fractional CFO stuff you can't skimp out on that type of purchase. Just make the purchase, trust me, it is going to save you so much time.
Speaker 1:And then we obviously we hit two years right and made some amazing connections, uh, for selling other people. So you know, we've been getting closer with the Andy Elliott group. So I've been going to a lot of those events, networking with a lot of business owners, and the fact that we made it to two years is awesome. You know, most companies don't. So the whole point of business is to stay in business. So that is you know where we're trying to go, um, I want to make this a big enterprise and hopefully sell it, um, at some point. So the fact that we got to two years, you know, just shows that you know we're at least doing something right. We're staying alive. Um hasn't been without his challenges for sure. But hey, we've made it to two. If you make it to two, you know we can continue to push. And the great thing about the two years we have more clients, we have more service calls, which brings in more profit to the business, which I'm excited about, right, the nice thing about water treatment is it is a business that does compound on itself as far as annual service calls and revenue. So once you own the doors you can really continue to build that long-term Going into the losses and there was a lot of them, so lots of waste and abuse that basically happened in the company and really that came from just having the wrong people in the wrong place and not having as much of an eye on things as they needed.
Speaker 1:So, for example, one thing I learned especially early on the service business is you really can't front money to people and it's hard to do that, especially if they seem like they're going to be a really good candidate, like you want to give them the money to, especially in like a learning environment, get the skillset to show you that what they can do. But what I found whenever you give anybody money, I don't care what their skillset is. They never, ever will do what you actually want them to do. The exception would be as if it was like a salaried employee with a massive resume with strict KPIs. I'm specifically talking about, for example, a sales manager who wants to come on and build a team for you. Instead, what you should do is create KPI benchmarks where you say, hey, I'm not going to pay you, but if you hit these benchmarks, I will then give you a really good percentage or a bonus. That would essentially be the same thing or more than what you'd pay them if you're going to give them, let's say, a couple hundred bucks a week, 500 a week, 1,000 a week, whatever, it is okay.
Speaker 1:Also, making sure you have tracking of where all that money is going right. When you have wrong people in the wrong place, they will wreck you in more ways than just one. For example, bad customer experience will cost you money that you don't see right away. Not taking care of your company vehicles will cost you a lot of money. One of my employees not only tried to get unemployment benefits from us, but he wrecked the vehicle, stole the vehicle and the vehicle had what? 80,000 miles on it and he completely blew it up. I mean the engines toast from just running it too hard, run it 24, seven, you know, taking it on jobs. He wasn't supposed to take it on and really it's our fault because we caught it late. Eventually, when we realized what he was doing, we got rid of him, but at that point the damage was done. So you really just got to make sure for anybody that you just keep people on a short leash until they've earned the right to be on a long leash. And even when they're on a long leash you got to do check-ins, especially even if someone is solid, like people will get complacent, and it's our job as business owners to be that kick in the ass whenever people aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing and to have those hard conversations whenever money's being wasted or if you see things that aren't lining up.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest issues and I kind of touched on this earlier was our vehicle issues. I feel like I was cursed last year with vehicle problems. Um, the vehicle that we had, like I said, the previous plumber that was working with us. He ran that thing like it was a joy rider. So essentially the engine blew up and it's too expensive to fix it. So then I got a new vehicle. That vehicle broke and so I had to pay to get that one fixed. And then we had to pay for rentals and some of those rentals were having issues. And then, you know, during that downtime when we weren't super busy, I was doing Home Depot rentals and buying work, van rentals from like a rent-a-car place, and a lot of that stuff also again adds up, so I was just wasting money and increasing my cost per install like crazy. Now, knock on wood, our van works now, but having vehicle problems is one of the things that can absolutely kill you.
Speaker 1:One of the things I wish I would have done earlier on and this is maybe counterintuitive to popular belief is my thought process last year and the year when I started the company was I'm going to invest in a expensive vehicle because that way to last longer and I assume the savings over time would make make up for it. What I didn't account for was my lack on noticing good talent in the trades. All right, it is very hard to find a tradesman who, one, will respect your stuff and number two, is reliable and three, actually gives a shit. Um, I didn't find that until like my fourth plumber in and that cost me. And what I wish I would have done is when I was dumb and was learning these things, I wish I would've just bought a beater, let these bad plumbers ruin the beater and then, when I finally found the good guy, then just bought the good van around the good guy, which sounds like such common sense now. But I was pretty naive and I just assumed because I'm a hard worker, I assumed these other people would be hard workers and would respect the things you give them.
Speaker 1:Not the case People, especially if you're a business owner, I have learned a majority of people will try to screw you and fuck you over because they don't care right and you over because they don't care Right. And I get it. It's not their company. Why would they? But you, as a business owner, got to understand that these motherfuckers don't care about you. So you got to care more about you than anybody else. Um, and make sure you build it that way. So until you find someone that's reliable, don't put money into it. Then, on the flip side of that, once you find someone that is reliable and actually treat your company like it their company and they actually want to help you build and you're, you have a good team synergy together. Then give them everything in the world, give them whatever you can because they deserve it.
Speaker 1:Okay, touch of this, again our losses. We did not have good tracking. So mileage, gas installs, all our tracking was off and a lot of that was due to the CRM we were using. So now that we have Jobber, that has been fixed. Lots of go backs again. Back to my install team.
Speaker 1:Deliverability on anything you do in a business is sometimes the most important than how you actually sell the damn thing, and for us, that also killed us. You know we had inexperienced plumbers coming in, we had no laziness happening. We didn't have tracking on. You know what those jobs look like for quite a few of these jobs. So we had to keep going back to fix jobs that should have been done right the first time.
Speaker 1:So what does that mean? That means wasted money, because me, as a business owner, I'm not going to charge my client when we messed up. So basically, I was just eating away at revenue for all these jobs that I was making money and that was taking me to break even or losing money, which is a horrendous place to be as an entrepreneur. It sucks right and it stresses me out, because I'm not making any money and I feel like the world's going to burn. So not fun. Had to take on way more debt than I would have I had. Next loss was I had to take on a way more debt than I would have liked due to cash flow restrictions. And again, a lot of this is due to the whole not having tracking, not having a bookkeeper, not having good installs and going back. It's death by a thousand cuts.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're making two to four grand in profit, if you have to keep going back or refunding, or, you know, shoveling money out for jobs that weren't done correctly, you're in a bad spot, like all that profit has got to come from somewhere, and especially when you have vehicle issues on top of that, you're trying to pay for marketing on top of that. You know you have all these things you're trying to do to keep the business going. All of these go backs and all these small little mistakes really add up into a massive, massive problem. And what ends up happening is, as we continue to grow, I got to front money for equipment, which means I have to put out more money for the bank account, which means less liquid cash to deal with problems, which means bringing on more debt, which then means I got to take loans out. But then if we have a slow month, then those loans catch up to you, because then they're recurring interest and you get into this death spiral and it sucks and it's scary. Um, and that is the life of an entrepreneur in the trades, and it's been our life, uh, for the last two years. Not fun, um, so here's some lessons I've learned from this whole thing, and I think that's the biggest thing is, as long as you can learn the lessons and you can improve, then you're fine. Right, you just got to figure out what the problems are and fix them very quickly.
Speaker 1:Number one is don't let any employee words sell you. Let their actions dictate the selling, and that is one thing. I'm a very trusting person and I like to be a trusting person. However, I have found that most people will talk a big game and, even if they have had past experience of being a rock star in their previous industry, sometimes when they get to a new industry, they just crumble. So what I have found is you just got to be really, really strict on it. Doesn't matter, even if they're your best friends, they could tell you everything in the world. Don't funnel any money or give them anything that's going to actually cost you money until they have proven that they can deliver, because all you're going to do is get more frustrated, waste a ton of money that you could have put elsewhere and, at the end of the day, if they really are an A player and they're saying they're this amazing person, then they'll let their actions do it, and those people generally like to work for the commissions that you'll pay them or the performance structure. I've never met an A player who said they don't want to get paid on their performance. That's only came from B and C players, just a little fun fact for you.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, if someone's output isn't that great in the first two weeks they're working for you, don't expect their output to be any greater after those first two weeks. The reality is people should be the most excited, the most hungry, the first month that they're in your organization, and I can't tell you how many times I've brought people on and they weren't very good the first two weeks. I, you know, chopped it up to training faults or whatever, and I tried to remedy it and they just got worse and worse and worse, comparably. The guys who came on hot in the first two weeks if I could build them, they stayed hot, okay. Now there are some guys that didn't make it just because we didn't have the organizational capacity to make them successful here. That's a different story. The people that were hot and hungry the first two weeks, they stayed hot and hungry, and that's what I love, okay. So I've just learned if you're shitty in the first two weeks, you're here, you're gone. There's no point in wasting time and energy, even if you like the person. If they suck in two weeks, they're out. You got to cut quick, all right. This is. This is an obvious one. Um, again, bleeding heart. I didn't do this as fast as I, as I should have.
Speaker 1:But people who bitch about money, all right, in your organization, without actually doing anything or proving any type of work, just let them go immediately. Because what I have found is the people who want a lot of money upfront. Or let's say, they come on and they think they're doing a lot of work, but nothing's actually come from that and they say, oh, I need to be paid all this money, they're going to be a nightmare forever and at the end of the day, they always think they should be paid more than what they're worth. And it's going to take a lot of mental energy from you. You're going to get resentful because you're actually going to see that the output that they're doing is not worth the money you're.
Speaker 1:So if you have some of this bitching about money, first off have the conversation with them and say, listen, if you want to make this money, here's the KPIs you need to hit, here's how you can earn it. And then even dangle the carrot on like, hey, if you can hit these metrics, then I'll pay you even more. Right, you should always pay for a good performance. You should overpay for good performance. But if someone's asking for money before they've ever showed anything, it ain't going to work out. And if you get any pushback on that or you know they start arguing with you just separate ways, because I promise you you're never going to change their mind and every level that demanding this is going to go up. And especially as a small business owner, you don't have the time, money or resources to be dealing with that. All right.
Speaker 1:No, prima donnas All right. I don't care how good they are. If you have a prima donna in the organization. They gotta go. Prima donnas are just the absolute worst. They take up energy, they take up time and they want you to move the business around them. Except they don't know the full scope of the business. So don't deal with it, especially in the early days. Let them go, all right, I promise you I don't care. If they're your best salesperson you will find somebody else, all right. And if they're a prima donna, it's gonna set the tone for how everybody else in the organization can act.
Speaker 1:And then, before you know it, you have rebellion on your hands and you can't actually have anyone do the job the way they're supposed to be done. All right If you do find a plus talent, which is so difficult, but once you find it and you will find it pay them an, a plus salary, right. Pay them a way above market rate because you want to keep them and they deserve it. However, like in my situation, you might not have the money to pay them. You know 70, 80, 90 K your salary, or whatever they want, right, they might want six figures. So if you can't actually afford the money for that A plus talent, then you need to give them an? A plus opportunity. So what that means is that could be adding equity to KPIs Like hey, if you help build the company to this amount, you'll get equity in the business. Uh, it could be a draw or bonus or profit sharing structure, right, there's got to be some sort of carrot to entice them to actually want to stay in and actually start. You know, working with you.
Speaker 1:And there are a players out there who will take a pay cut for that long term goal and that long term sale. I know I did when I went to go build a solar company right, I had was making in water at the time 2030 K month as a salesperson. When I took that, I went to go build a solar company right, I was making in water at the time 20, 30k a month as a salesperson. When I took that pay cut to go build a solar startup, I knew I was gonna not make as much money day one, but the long-term payoffs would be well worth it. So you gotta do the same thing for your A-plus players, otherwise, why the hell are they gonna work for you? If you gotta complain against this another, they're going to work for you If you got to complain against this. Another lesson learned if you have to complain about the same person twice in a week. You either need to have a very strong conversation with them or you need to let them go.
Speaker 1:I'm always a big fan of doing performance. I'm always a big fan of trying to do improved performance reviews and put them on pips where they can, you know, follow a plan to improve attitude or performance, whatever their issue is. But again, early on, early days, early stages you do not want to be dealing with that shit. Um, I know I spent a lot of time, a lot of energy, trying to improve people, but then all I would do is bitch about them offline, like I would tell them to do something. They wouldn't do it, or I'd have my sales do it, or I'd have my sales guys or I'd have my install or admin team. They'd come to me bitching about these people. And once everyone has an issue with somebody on my team, if it doesn't get fixed within that next week, like they're gone Because it's again. It's all about time, it's all about energy, and if everyone energy is getting sucked by this one person, your entire company's output is going to drop. So you got to be really strict on this stuff and just set that expectation whenever someone does come into the business be like dude.
Speaker 1:We don't tolerate prima donnas. We don't tolerate bad attitudes here, like if you're here, you're a warrior, you're going to come fight with us. You know one team, one fight. We're here for one mission. Like we're here to grow and if you're not a part of that mission to grow then don't stay here. We don't need you, okay? And you just gotta hold that line, because I can't tell you just how much wasted time I have spent trying to get people who are just terrible to not be terrible. And as you grow, you might have a better way of doing that. You have more people, you have a bigger culture, so maybe attitude shifts can happen a little bit faster. But when you're small, time is when you're most precious resources, so you can't be wasting on people who are not actively being beneficial to the business.
Speaker 1:This is one. This is a lesson I learned and I learned this actually from the military and I was able to implement it here and don't forget to hold your best people accountable and that can be difficult at times, because a lot of times your best people you have the best relationships with they're doing the most for your company, but they are still humans and a lot of times your best people. Because they're doing so well, you tend to stop looking at them as much because you just trust them to do their jobs. But they slip and get complacent like everybody else. So you definitely have to hold them accountable the same way you'd hold anybody else. That way, they still understand that they need to hold the standard they already had.
Speaker 1:Obviously, the conversation, the tone of those conversations are generally a lot different, you know. It's not so much a hey, you suck, tim, instead it is a dude Tim, you're the best Like. I just noticed that you're not performing up to what you normally do. What's going on? And then a lot of times they'll give you some insights on maybe a weakness in the business that they're not feeling comfortable with, or maybe we need to up compensation, or maybe they have ideas they don't feel like has been heard. What I have found is when I see complacency from my top guys, it's usually because they don't want to complain to me about something, but there is an underlying issue with the business that if I fix that would actually make the whole organization better. So stay on them, make sure they're working hard and if he's noticed they're slipping. I would just come out with some sort of empathy and just be like hey dude, what's going on? And a lot of times, if it's an issue with the business, you can get something fixed which will make the whole organization better.
Speaker 1:All right, this year I've learned a lot about myself, um, as an entrepreneur, as a person, um, and man do I? When I thought what I thought this was going to be, was not it? Um, I definitely thought it'd be easier at this point. Um, I knew it was gonna be hard, but I think we all, whenever we go into endeavors that require big stuff to happen, we always know it's going to be difficult. I don't think we actually understand the magnitude of how long it's going to be or how it's actually going to feel. It is not sexy, I know. If the thing sells for millions and millions and millions of dollars, or even $1 million, whatever, everyone's going to look at it like oh man, I wish I had done that. Let me tell you after this I don't think I'll ever do a trades business again, because I learned so much about myself. Number one I. I don't think I'll ever do a trades business again, um, cause I learned so much about myself.
Speaker 1:Uh, number one I really don't like him with, with, with low skilled employees. Okay, um, I don't like working with people who, uh, you know the fundamental business they're in is low skilled or they don't have the talents. And, unfortunately, in a lot of the trades you deal with a majority of people who suck. And the people who don't suck are very expensive, as they should be, and that's one thing you learn about the trades, like, if you've ever worked with a tradesman who's super expensive, they're probably awesome Right, because they know. What I now know is that a lot of people in the trades are terrible. It's just the reality. The majority of people who do these skills aren't good at them and they're usually cheaper right, and that's a lot of times who I attract as a new business owner. Now, the benefit of making more money is you can attract better talent. But, again, the people who are really good in the trades great plumbers, great electricians, great whatever they usually already have good jobs. So it's really difficult to get these guys or they're on their own, doing their own thing Right.
Speaker 1:So that's been the biggest thing that I've really struggled with, because until I found the guys I have now it. It was almost impossible and it was impossible to get them to be on the same mindset as you, to be on time to to hold the standard. And I fired I can't tell you how many people and you know they would go out and wreck my van to do all kinds of nonsense. You know I can't. I had the same van chop shopped, sold out, um, ran, ran, ragged, crashed. It's crazy. I had guys doing drugs in my vans. Yeah, you know, it's just you name it. It happened, um, and so I I have learned I don't like dealing with that.
Speaker 1:Um, obviously, when we get bigger and maybe I don't I have the structure made Cool, I won't have to worry about that as much anymore, but I just don't like dealing with it. It's not how I'm wired. So when I have to have those conversations with people who are low skilled and they don't care, it's not a good fit for me. And that's the unfortunate thing about being a bootstrap startup is you got to work with what you can get Again, unless you can offer the A plus opportunity which I finally got people who bought into that. But it took me almost two years to get to that point. So very, very stressful, not something I anticipated having to deal with whatsoever.
Speaker 1:Um, I learned I have to do more verifying and be more like daddy in the business, which, again, not very fun, um, I am. I don't know if it's because of my military background or what, but I am definitely like a shut the fuck up and let's get shit done. Like if it's me and I got to do work, like I don't care how, how hard the work is, I don't care what I have to do to get it done, I'm just going to get it done. I don't care how hard the work is, I don't care what I have to do to get it done, I'm going to get it done, I don't care how much I hate it. Most people I am learning are not wired like that. Most people need a little bit more babying. Some people need to talk to someone.
Speaker 1:I have now learned a lot about myself is I'm not that guy I've always wished I was. You know, I watched Gary V all the time, right, and I want to be Mr Empathy and I feel for you. I'm not wired that way, like I see something and I'm like it's a hard problem, it's a task that needs to get done. We'll just get it done. Like, what else is there to bitch about? Like, get the task done, get the mission complete, that's all there is. Like, what is bitching about it going to do Nothing? But most people like to bitch and most people want you to hold their hands.
Speaker 1:So I have learned that I need someone else as a partner or an HR department, or somebody who can be my second or my managers. Who can be that person? I think it's important to know, because you have to understand that. Listen, your employees are the lifeblood of the company and if you communicate in a way that you know is not beneficial for people who are a little bit softer, well you're going to lose, right? You can't have a company of just straight fucking savages, like I like to be. Maybe on the sales side you can, but there's a lot of different functions where that's just not how it works.
Speaker 1:I have found I really only like to work around A-type personalities A players, people who are hungry. My best salesman, me and him go back and forth all the time, but we can be real with each other and I love it. The conversations we have I can't have with a lot of people, so I've been trying to cultivate that, which is why we stayed small, but I know that's going to be as we continue to grow. That is going to be, you know something that you know when we hit, when we hit the next milestone, it's going to be a constraint on the business. Um, and you know, who knows, maybe when I'm less stressed I'll be a little bit more empathetic, but uh, it's not my strong suit and I think everyone needs to know that.
Speaker 1:And if you want to grow in the business, if I can leave you with one lesson, don't try to run the business of the person you wish you could be. Run it as a person you are and when you realize your your own holes in your own personality flaws, fill them with someone that's really, really good at that. That's why my admin has been phenomenal, because I've gotten to the point where my stress levels are so high that I would have customers calling about legitimate issues and I would be so short with them and my patients would be just wrecked because I have 20,000 other problems going on and I'm hearing about this small little complaint about something that's not even wrong with the system and I got to talk to you for five, for two hours. Right, really pissed me off, but that is not the customer's fault, that is my fault. It's not their problems of what's going on with the business. So, knowing that you brought in the admin, the bleeding heart, the person that loves talking to people, and now customer satisfaction is way better. But you got to understand that about yourself. Otherwise you're going to try to be something you're not. It's going to drive you crazy. So if you're an asshole, understand you're an asshole, try to work on a little bit, you know, but fill people around you that compliment you right and also just let people know how you operate. I have gotten a lot of traction of just setting the standard of what I expect and how I roll, and a lot of times people respect that. So if you are that type of person like me where you don't really have much empathy when people don't want to do the work, just let them know that that's how you roll in the first place. So at least that standard expectation has been set.
Speaker 1:Um, bootstrapping, so final lesson uh, I bootstrapped this company and uh, way harder. Uh, to grow, way harder growing your bootstraps. Uh, you take on more initial debt and you just don't have liquidity to make mistakes, and I think that's been the hardest thing for us is the liquidity of making mistakes is non-existent. So whenever the van breaks or we have to order more equipment or we have to go do a go back or replace equipment or anything that requires us to spend money outside of the allocated budget, it can literally cripple us and I've seen that so many times in this business where it has just been up and down and things happen that I'm not planning for and it just sucks the well dry. And I think if you are bootstrapping a company you should just definitely prepare for to take way longer than you expected, especially in a home service.
Speaker 1:Um, one of the things I really really learned about this is the next business I do after this is going to be all margin. It's going to be a service. It's going to be a training. Um, it's going to be something where I have no real overhead on what I have to deliver, whether that's a course, whether that's sales, whether that's you know some sort of, I come in, I build your business where I sell for you, whatever, whatever that looks like. Um, that next business is strictly going to be all margin. Um, and realistically, with people who are in the same vein that I am right, like salespeople. If I could just work with salespeople or entrepreneurs, uh, those are my people, um, so that's going to be where I'm going to be moving forward.
Speaker 1:Uh, as far as the company, um, we finally have the key, the key people in place. Um, and you know, our books are now getting sorted, so I've been able to see where the bleeding's been. Um, so you know, now it's it's tough to make some hard conversations. You know we have to. You know, cut some things out to make sure that we can actually start making money again. But that's the name of the game, right? You, you, you grow and you figure things out.
Speaker 1:Um, I remember when I really started this business, my goal I really wanted to build this big empire. I'm at the point now where I really just want to build it big enough to be sold. There's so many big players in this game that just have, you know, such an advantage with the money that they can put into marketing and equipment, spend and everything. And I know the shadow of a doubt, if I stuck with this for the next 10 years, we could get there. But I'm big on opportunity costs. I would much rather build this thing up and sell the company, help everyone that's grown it with me get a nice big payday. We all, you know, make life changing money and then I can, you know, reinvest that into the next thing. You know I'm never satisfied. I know there's bigger and better. I've learned so much from this experience. Um, I've got connected with a bunch of of big people from the industry and you know I'm I'm really proud of what we've done so far and I think my goal going into next year is just focused fully on profits.
Speaker 1:Um, you know some of the ways. You know, last two years we really were doing things, uh, that were detrimental to the business, even as far as charging customers less than we should have been, and you know it's gonna be a hard shift going into this year. We did the math, went through all the costs of materials and materials went up. I didn't allocate for that. So on a lot of these service jobs I was losing money and it was again death by a thousand cuts. So now that we got this stuff fixed, you know we can really push forward with with some vigor and make sure that we're rocking and rolling in a good direction. Um, so year three is a year of profitability and I really just want to get us to a point, to where we're. We're sustaining a good amount of deal flow, everyone's making decent money, our costs are at least going down or staying the same.
Speaker 1:Um, and just removing the variance. Um, you know we've we've had way too much variance over the years and you know we got a lot of stuff on the back end that I'm working on. I got a couple school communities I'm looking to build, got the course coming out, which is gonna be huge. Got another business with my buddy, dylan, who does digital marketing, to basically create some business scaling, and you know it's gonna be good. I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 1:But you know, if you are a startup, just understand it's always gonna take longer than you thought it would. It's going to be more stressful than you thought it should, but at the end of the day, it's always worth it. And I make this podcast to show you that, even when things look great online, they're not always right. I am more stressed every single day than I ever have been before. There's always new problems, new things that are happening and day than I ever have been before. There's always new problems, new things that are happening, and I gotta tell you it's uh, it's more than I bargained for. But when you ask for a big life, you got to expect big problems and you can't bitch about them, right? Uh, this is where everyone else has been at some point. You know, test almost went bankrupt at one point. You know, I know Alex Ramosi, who is one of my favorite people of all time. He talks about how close all his businesses were to failing and eventually they make it, and I just think it's one of those things where the pain you have to endure is unlike anything else.
Speaker 1:I thought, and I gotta say I got way more respect to all the business owners out there, even ones I used to work for in the past. Um, it looks so much easier when you're just a sales guy. It looks so much easier when you're just selling leads that are given to you, when you're just, you know, making your commissions. You know you don't got to see all the backend. You don't have to worry about all the fulfillment. You've got to see what they're.
Speaker 1:You know the reality is, you know we did almost right over a million bucks last year and I remember my brain saying, oh, once we hit a million, I'm going to be golden. I'll be bringing back so much money and in reality we probably should have, but there was so much stuff wrong with the business we didn't. So name of the game, guys, it's not how much money you make, it's how much money you keep. And from day one, like, you've just got to track every little thing and you do got to take risks. But you know, as you, as you grow, just try to slow things down, don't try to grow too fast.
Speaker 1:I think that was one of our other mistakes. Is we really just started growing really quickly? Because I was really trying to hit these arbitrary revenue numbers, um and I, and I think that put us in a in a more detrimental position. To be honest, um, you know, you guys all know, I brought a partner on who stole money from the company, which that happens all the time. So you know some, some big mistakes that were made. But you know, at the end of the day, you can't wallow in mistakes. All you need to learn from them.
Speaker 1:And so this is the, the, the, the, the two year review. I hope there are some lessons, there are some things that happened to us that you can find helpful and help you grow. As always, guys, I'm here, here for you. I'm going to be documenting this journey all the way through and, yeah, we'll see what happens. We got a lot of exciting things on the horizon and I'll keep you guys updated. I'm definitely gonna be trying to put this podcast out a lot more regularly, but of course, my schedule has quadrupled in busyness, which has made it more difficult. But hey, no excuses, baby.